It's just a consolation badge, and I've had the unfortunate pleasure of asking my second question that would earn the badge. It would be nice (for some strange reason) to get another tumbleweed badge.

I'm not sure if the reason is that given here. That is, my first question was eventually answered, so it negated my first tumbleweed badge, but it wasn't taken away; I just didn't receive a second one. But this seems to conflict with the definition of the tumbleweed badge:

Asked a question with no answers, no comments, and low views for a week.

3 Answers
3

I suspect that the reason this badge works like this is that the badges which can be awarded multiple times can be calculated (or re-calculated) based on the data present in the system.

For example "Nice Answer" badges stick around even if the answer is deleted from the system, but you then have to earn two nice answer badges to get your next badge. This is because the system can see you have X many questions with 10 or more upvotes, and it sees you have Y badges. As long as X <= Y, you don't earn another badge. If at some point X > Y, you earn another badge.

With tumbleweed, however, the conditions on which you earn the badge are transient. After it's earned, the conditions for which you earned it might no longer exist (you could get an answer or comment or some views). Thus, the system has no way to "check" that the number of badges you earned is correct, or that you aren't being awarded multiple times for the same question. So instead you can only ever earn one of these.

Dammit! I was hoping no one would answer this, or comment on this, and very few people would look at it for a week. The irony would have been amazing! But you had to ruin it. Damn you, random!
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Super Long Names are HilariousSep 11 '09 at 5:08

This is pure speculation, but it might an attempt to discourage people from trying to think of questions that are likely to earn a Tumbleweed just to inflate the number of badges they have while not contributing anything useful to the site.